Some food products, such as cakes and cookies, are popular items for special events, including, for example, a birthday, a wedding ceremony, and an anniversary ceremony. People typically make the cakes at home, but more often, order the cakes from a bakery. To add more happiness to the special events, people sometimes wish to add decorative items, such as special words, symbols, images (e.g., pictures or photos), flowers, etc., on top of the cakes. These decorative items are typically produced on the cakes by manually applying a layer of color icing and/or frosting to the top surface of the cakes using an applicator, such as a nozzle. Manual decorating of the cakes, however, entails excellent skills, and is labor intensive.
Alternative systems have been developed to make cake decoration easier and more convenient. Some systems use a conventional printer or photocopier to form an image on an edible medium, such as an edible paper, and then place the edible medium, on which the image has been formed, on the cakes. This type of system enables a user to apply virtually anything that is desirable to the cakes.
These conventional printers and/or photocopiers are typically equipped with conventional ink cartridges that are originally designed only for normal document/photo printing/photocopying purposes, but are not designed for the food industry. In the current market, many ink cartridges for printing such decorative items in food industry either simply replicate the design of the conventional ink cartridges, or use recycled ink cartridges from the document/photo printing industry.
When used in the food industry, these conventional ink cartridges filled with edible inks pose a serious health concern. A conventional ink cartridge is typically provided with a sponge within an ink reservoir. The sponge provides several functionalities, among which is to keep a pressure balance and to absorb and hold the ink so that the ink does not leak from the reservoir or does not dry up quickly. However, the sponge provides a place for molds, yeasts, and/or bacteria to grow under room moisture and temperature. Although the molds, yeasts, and/or bacteria grown in the sponge may not be seen by naked eyes, they may contaminate the edible ink. Thus, when the edible ink is used in printing edible decorative items, which are subsequently consumed by a consumer, the consumer's health may be seriously threatened. In addition, when consumers learn of the possible existence of molds, yeasts, and/or bacteria in the ink that is used in forming the edible decorative items, they may no longer feel comfortable in purchasing food products with edible decorative items. This may damage the image of the store or bakery that sell the food products having the edible decorative items, which may result in a decline in the business of the store or bakery.
The present disclosure is directed toward improvements in the existing technology for generating edible decorative items in the food industry.